After years on both the ownership and management sides of multifamily property management, Ron Kutas, CEO of OneWall Communities, has learned exactly where money quietly leaks out of a property. Three line items come up again and again: marketing, maintenance, and general administrative costs.
On marketing, the culprit is usually internet listing services (ILS) bought on autopilot. Kutas shares a real example: after taking over a property in Atlanta, his team found the prior manager “were paying to have the apartments marketed and advertised on a website that was specific to a town in Iowa.”
That was $700 a month, or $8,400 a year, spent reaching renters who were never going to move to Atlanta. Small line item, real money.
Maintenance is the second. Kutas points to the untrained technician who reaches for an outside vendor too quickly. A clogged toilet that turns into a backflow becomes a plumber call, when “they do what the technician could have done for $500 instead of the technician who’s already on your payroll.”
The same logic applies to HVAC, where a unit that could be fixed for a few hundred dollars gets replaced for $7,500 to $10,000 with little justification.
General administrative expense is the third, and Kutas finds it “actually more intentional.” Some companies bill everything back to the properties, right down to new office furniture, dividing the cost across every unit they manage. “It may only be $60 this month or $120 the next month, but those numbers add up,” he says. OneWall Communities takes a different approach: “We’re very transparent with the way that we bill back and what we bill back. That’s an exhibit to every one of our property management agreements. Those are my business expenses, not the properties.”
That transparency is what value-add looks like when a vertically integrated operator manages your workforce housing.Property management is complex, and the best solutions come from shared
incentives. Whether you’re exploring new approaches or facing specific challenges, we’re here to talk.
Visit us at onewallcommunities.com or call us at (646) 596-7068.